22score
#102 of 131
Overall rank

Radeon RX 590

4 · 287 votes
Best for 1080p esports gaming

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VRAM
8 GB
CUDA
2,304
FP32
7.119 TF
Bandwidth
256 GB/s
TDP
175W
Boost
1545 MHz
Strengths at a Glance

How it stacks up to the flagship

Each metric is shown as a percentage of the GeForce RTX 5090 D, the strongest card we track.

FP32 compute7.119 TFLOPS7%
vs RTX 5090 D: 104.8 TFLOPS
Memory bandwidth256 GB/s14%
vs RTX 5090 D: 1790 GB/s
VRAM capacity8 GB25%
vs RTX 5090 D: 32 GB
Shading units2,30411%
vs RTX 5090 D: 21,760
Power efficiency13/10022%
vs RTX 5090 D: 58/100
Synthetic Benchmarks

Estimated benchmark results

Each result is shown as a share of the RTX 5090 D's score in the same test.

3DMark Time Spy7,920pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 36,000 pts
3DMark Port Royal (RT)3,420pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 18,000 pts
Blender (samples/min)1,040spm
vs RTX 5090 D: 5,200 spm
Geekbench Compute40,800pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 240,000 pts

Performance breakdown

Gaming22
Ray tracing19
AI / Compute17
Creator / 3D20
Power efficiency13
Real-World Gaming

FPS Across Resolutions

1080p · Ultra preset1440p · Ultra preset4K · Ultra preset
Cyberpunk 2077avg 26 fps
1080p
47
1440p
22
4K
10
Counter-Strike 2avg 63 fps
1080p
121
1440p
47
4K
22
Fortniteavg 71 fps
1080p
134
1440p
51
4K
28
Battlefield 5avg 66 fps
1080p
97
1440p
61
4K
39
Far Cry 5avg 49 fps
1080p
72
1440p
51
4K
23
Valorantavg 147 fps
1080p
107
1440p
225
4K
110

Average FPS across all PC games

1080p
108fps
1440p
64fps
4K
36fps

Cost per frame

Launch MSRP ($279) ÷ average FPS — lower is better.

1080p
$2.88
1440p
$4.92
4K
$6.97
Community Feedback

What Owners Say

Owners like the solid 1080p gaming performance and good value for its time. The common gripe is it runs hot and draws a lot of power compared to newer cards.

Pros
  • Great 1080p gaming performance
  • Runs cool and quiet
  • Plays modern titles smoothly
  • Reliable for its age
Cons
  • Old architecture hurts efficiency
  • Lackluster ray tracing support
  • Only 8GB of VRAM

Supported technologies

AV1 Encode

Full specifications

Graphics processor
Architecture
GCN 4.0
Process node
12 nm
Transistors
5.7 B
Compute Units
36
Release date
2018
Launch price
$279
Core configuration
CUDA Cores
2,304
TMUs
144
ROPs
32
L2 cache
2 MB
Memory
Size
8 GB
Type
GDDR5
Bus width
256-bit
Bandwidth
256 GB/s
Memory clock
2000 MHz
Clocks & throughput
Base clock
1469 MHz
Boost clock
1545 MHz
FP32 (float)
7.119 TFLOPS
FP16 (half)
7.119 TFLOPS
Pixel rate
49 GPixel/s
Texture rate
222.5 GTexel/s
Board & power
TDP
175W
Suggested PSU
350W
Power connectors
1x 8-pin
Bus interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Length
241 mm
Slot width
2-slot
Display & outputs
Max resolution
7680×4320
Outputs
1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

API and SDK support

DirectX
12 (12_0)
Shader Model
6.4
OpenGL
4.6
OpenCL
2.0
Vulkan
1.2.131
Verdict

Our verdict on the RX 590

An aging GCN card that was just a clock bump of the RX 580, running hot and drawing too much power for what it offered.

Get it if you need a cheap, reliable 1080p card for older games and don't care about modern features like ray tracing. Skip it if you want to play newer, demanding titles or prefer something that runs cooler and uses less power.

Buy it if…

  • You play older DirectX 11 games and want high settings for cheap.
  • You need a reliable backup card for a secondary gaming rig.
  • You are building a budget 1080p system and find a great used deal.
4.0

287 votes

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